Swish Fibre Bring FTTP Broadband to Kebbell Homes and Elivia Homes Sites
Network operator and UK ISP Swish Fibre, which is deploying a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 250,000 premises across the Home Counties of England, has reached an agreement to extend their infrastructure across new build homes being built by Kebbell Homes and Elivia Homes.
The operator, which is being supported by £225m of funding from Fern Trading (they also back Giganet, AllPoints Fibre, Jurassic Fibre and Vorboss), has so far focused most of its efforts on various locations in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Yorkshire (conducted via their Swish Fibre Yorkshire subsidiary) and Hampshire.
However, as part of today’s announcement, Swish will now – initially – also be expanding their full fibre network to reach 63 retrofitted homes and a further 20 new properties at the Elivia Homes’ Chestnut Grange development in Felbridge, followed by 50 homes at the Hunter’s Chase development in Haslemere and 45 new properties in Wivelsfield Green.
As for the deal with Kebbell Homes, Swish plan to deploy into the Cornelian Fields development in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The project includes luxury three and four-bedroom properties and Swish will also retrofit 124 homes, before working on the next series of phases over the coming years to cover up to 660 more.
Conor Nolan, Swish Fibre co-Founder, said (show house):
“We’re delighted to be working with Kebbell Homes and Elivia Homes. Both collaborations signal our long-term commitments in delivering the very best in full-fibre broadband connectivity at scale for years to come.”
Customers can expect to pay from £30 per month (inc. 6 months of free service) on an 18-month term for their entry-level 150Mbps (symmetric) package, which rises to £75 (currently discounted to £50) for their top 900Mbps tier.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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I mean good for them but this is literally peanut numbers. The owner will have a hard time every time a provider commits to building a few dozen homes
Does the deal block out Openreach or other networks from servicing these homes?
Probably as this is new build and agreement done by developer
Agree with Wilson. Peanut numbers. This really isn’t exciting news from Swish to be honest..
Looking at Companies House, not to be so much “funding from Fern Trading”, but actually a subsidiary of Fern Trading. And FT themselves are conglomerate with interests in housebuilding, retirement villages, private hospitals, property lending, PV, windfarm and biomass power plants (one of the biomass plants is quite literally chicken s***.), plus a range of broadband investments. Perhaps this should be called Bandwagon plc? Having said that, they made a profit last year, and seems odd to be dabbling in broadband which seems a surefire way of making a small fortune (but only if you start off with a large fortune). But before writing off FT as an odd little conglomerate, it is worthy of note that they are backed by Octopus Investments. OI say of themselves they offer “investment options to help with your tax planning”. Just the sort of business this country needs, I’m sure.
Ah well if they made a profit then the random darts they’ve thrown around seemed to have had some positive effect
That’s the thing – the other darts aren’t random. Renewable energy is bankrolled by your energy bill, and it’s really difficult to lose money. With an ageing population and a struggling health service, retirement villages and private hospitals are a reasonably safe bet. With a housing shortage…etc. That’s what makes the altnet investment so odd for Fern Trading. Maybe Octopus wanted some tax losses! Or perhaps they want to be in a position to profit from the forthcoming consolidation, intending to pick up failed altnet assets for a pittance. Octopus Investments is at the centre of a Spectre-style web of companies, and OI are reported to have £12.6bn of “assets under management” in 2022. Even then, the viability of competitive infrastructure seems dubious. UK cable networks up to and including Virgin Media have never made any real money, and that was during two decades when they had no high speed competition.
If Swish have tied up a lockout deal with Kebbell Homes, it’s bad news for home buyers.
Swish are currently rolling out fibre in my mums town. They are following VM, OR and F&W networks who have already installed FTTP to most of the town. Not sure how 4 can survive. Wish one of the altnets would do my area as only VM and FTTC.
Good luck to them , broadband will be as bad quality as the homes itself
What’s wrong with Swish’s network? I joined recently.
I used to work for Swish, they put through the business an elderly care home, with each individual room counting as home’s passed (RFS) to make Fern happy.
The company’s last hope is the consolidation with the other Fern backed ISP’s. The consolidation of People’s Fibre in Essex was a complete disaster, and noone that was transferred is with the company anymore.
The company is full of empty promises.
There was so much drama during my employment there, that it would be better to show it as a NEtflix documentary.